Whatever irreparable harm may have been done to Society by the recent
epidemic of crook, sex and other dialect plays, one great alleviation
has resulted. They have driven up-stage, for the time being, the
characters who exist on tea and repartee in "The drawing-room of Sir
Arthur Peaversham's town house, Grosvenor Square. Time: late Autumn."
A person in a crook play may have talked underworld patois which no
self-respecting criminal would have allowed himself to utter, but he
did not sit on a divan and evolve abnormal _bons mots_ with each and
every breath. The misguided and misinformed daughter in the Self and
Sex Play may have lisped words which only an interne should hear, but
she did not offer a succession of brilliant but meaningless paradoxes
as a substitute for real conversation.
Continuously snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such acts
as those of "Cooney & LeBlanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team."
And even _they_ manage to scrape along without the paradoxes.
But there was a time, beginning with the Oscar Wilde era, when no
unprotected thought was safe.
[Illustration: "Snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such
acts as 'Cooney & LeBlanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team.'"]
It might be seized at any moment by an English Duke or a Lady Agatha
and strangled to death. Even the butlers in the late 'eighties were
wits, and served epigrams with cucumber sandwiches; and a person
entering one of these drawing-rooms and talking in connected
sentences--easily understood by everybody--each with one subject,
predicate and meaning, would have been looked upon as a high class
moron. One might as well have gone to a dinner at Lady Coventry's
without one's collar, as without one's kit of trained paradoxes.
[Illustration: "The butlers served epigrams with the cucumber
sandwiches."]
A late Autumn afternoon in one of these semi-Oscar Wilde plays, for
instance, would run something like this:
SCENE--_The Octagon Room in Lord Raymond Eaveston's Manor House in
Stropshire._
LADY EAVESTON and SIR THOMAS WAFFLETON _are discovered, arranging red
flowers in a vase_.
SIR T.: I detest red flowers; they are so yellow.
LADY E.: What a cynic you are, Sir Thomas. I really must not listen to
you or I shall hear something that you say.
SIR T.: Not at all, my dear Lady Eaveston. I detest people who listen
closely; they are so inattentive.
LADY E.: Pray do not be analytical, my dear Sir Thomas. When people
are extremely analytical with me I am sure that they are superficial,
and, to me, nothing is more abominable than superficiality, unless
perhaps it is an intolerable degree of thoroughness.
(_Enter Meadows, the Butler_)
MEADOWS (_announcing_): Sir Mortimer Longley and Mrs. Wrennington,--a
most remarkable couple,--I may say in announcing them,--in that there
is nothing at all remarkable about them.
(_Enter Sir Mortimer and Mrs. Wrennington_)
MRS. W.: So sorry to be late, dear Lady Eaveston. But it is so easy to
be on time that I always make it a point to be late. It lends poise,
and poise is a charming quality for any woman to have, am I not right,
Sir Thomas?
SIR T.: You are always right, my dear Mrs. Wrennington, and never more
so than now, for I know of no more attractive attribute than poise,
unless perhaps it be embarrassment.
LADY E.: What horrid cynics you men are! Really, Sir Thomas, one might
think, from your sophisticated remarks that you had been brought up in
the country and had seen nothing of life.
SIR T.: And so I _have_ been, my dear Lady Eaveston. To my mind,
London is nothing but the country, and certainly Stropshire is nothing
but a metropolis. The difference is, that when one is in town, one
lives with others, and when one is in the country, others live with
one. And both plans are abominable.
MRS. W.: What a horrid combination! I hate horrid combinations; they
always turn out to be so extremely pleasant.
(_Enter Meadows_)
MEADOWS (_announcing_): Sir Roland Pinshamton; Viscount Lemingham;
Countess Trotski and Mr. Peters. In announcing these parties I cannot
refrain from remarking that it has always been my opinion that a man
who intends to get married should either know something or nothing,
preferably both.
(_Exit Meadows_)
COUNTESS T.: So sorry to be late, my dear Lady Eaveston. It was
charmingly tolerant of you to have us.
LADY E.: Invitations are never tolerant, my dear Countess; acceptances
always are. But do tell me, how is your husband, the Count,--or
perhaps he is no longer your husband. One never knows these days
whether a man is his wife's husband or whether she is simply his wife.
COUNTESS T. (_lighting a cigarette_): Really, Lady Eaveston, you grow
more and more interesting. I detest interesting people; they are so
hopelessly uninteresting. It is like beautiful people--who are usually
so singularly unbeautiful. Has not that been your experience, Sir
Mortimer?
SIR M.: May I have the pleasure of escorting you to the music-room,
Mrs. Wrennington?
(_Exeunt omnes to music-room for dinner_)
Curtain.
It is from this that we have, in a measure, been delivered by the
court-room scenes, and all the medical dramas. But the paradox still
remains intrenched in English writing behind Mr. G.K. Chesterton, and
he may be considered, by literary tacticians, as considerable
stronghold.
Here again we find our commonplaces shaken up until they emerge in
what looks like a new and tremendously imposing shape, and all of them
ostensibly proving the opposite of what we have always understood. If
we do not quite catch the precise meaning at first reading, we lay it
to our imperfect perception and try to do better on the next one. It
seldom occurs to us that it really may have no meaning at all and
never was intended to have any, any more than the act of hanging by
your feet from parallel bars has any further significance than that
you can manage to do it.
So, before retiring to the privacy of our personal couches, let us
thank an all wise Providence, that the drama-paradox has passed away.